The True Bad Girls of American Politics: A Crib Sheet to the Newly Elected Women of the Right Wing

If the big political story two weeks ago was the trouncing of the Democratic Party, the capricious nature of American elections, and the apparent reddening of an already ruddy nation, the more striking—and, regardless of your political views, encouraging—story was the ascent of female candidates into both state and congressional seats. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of women in Congress will break the triple digits. And, while plenty of those women are liberal, a new group, in keeping with the mood of these times, is striking for its fiscal and social conservatism. When Congress convenes in January, it will have six Republican women senators, and more than 20 women in Republican seats in the House. Here, an introduction to the rising right-wingers of the legislature.

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Shelley Moore Capito

On her election to the House of Representatives in 2000, Capito, a Republican, was the first woman West Virginia ever elected to Congress in her own right. This fall, she became its first female senator-elect. By her own description, she is fierce: She recently told Fox News that she will be “extremely aggressive” in her attempt to roll back the EPA regulations that affect coal mining in her district. (If you dig power in West Virginia, after all, you’ve got to dig coal first.) A few months before the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster of exploding coal dust, an event that killed twenty-nine coal workers, Capito cofounded the Congressional Coal Caucus to “raise awareness about the benefits of coal.” (Coal: not just explosions.) Capito’s other activities include sitting on the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.